Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 48, 2-3, 2013 Doi: 10.2478/Stap-2013-0008

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 48, 2-3, 2013 doi: 10.2478/stap-2013-0008 COMING TO TERMS WITH A PAGAN PAST: THE STORY OF ST ERKENWALD STEFAN SCHUSTEREDER Universität Bonn, Germany ABSTRACT The poem of St Erkenwald and his encounter with the body of a pagan judge preserved in a tomb underneath St Paul's Cathedral has never provoked an intense scholarly discussion. During the past two decades, however, the poem has altogether lost the scarce attention it used to receive. This is surprising in regards to its outstanding quality but also because of a number of peculiar characteristics the text has in comparison with other works written during the Middle Ages. Argu- ing for the importance of the historical details provided by the poem, my article takes a number of these peculiarities into account and suggests a new reading of the poem. In this approach, I do not dismiss the major topics of the earlier scholarly discussions, mostly focused on the poem's theological and stylistic topics or its presumed sources. My article rather presents an additional reading from the perspective of a literary history, thus arguing that the poem of St Erkenwald can be placed within a discourse tradition to which a number of earlier authors contributed, the most famous among them being the Venerable Bede. While the poem addresses a variety of theological and stylistic topics and is of course influenced by its contemporary religious and social developments, it also contributes to one of the fundamental problems of English identity in the Middle Ages: coming to terms with a pagan origin. Keywords: St Erkenwald, History of the English, Pagan Ancestry, Middle English Poetry, 14th and 15th century literature 1. Introduction The poem of Saint Erkenwald and the story of his encounter with the body of a pagan judge preserved in a tomb underneath St Paul’s Cathedral in London has never really provoked an intense scholarly discussion. During the past two decades the poem has altogether lost the scarce scholarly attention it used to re- 72 S. Schustereder ceive. This is surprising, not only in regard to its outstanding quality but also because of a number of peculiar, possibly even singular characteristics the text has in comparison with other works written during the Middle Ages. The following paper will take a number of these peculiarities into account and suggest a reading of the poem which goes beyond earlier scholarly discussions which have mostly focused on the poem’s theological and stylistic topics or its presumed sources. This contribution presents a postcolonial reading of a Middle English poem that deals, among other aspects, with a very fundamental problem of the English throughout their insular history, i.e. their pagan past. The arrival of the Germanic gentes and the conquest of the Christian Britons by these pagan people from the Continent as well as the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons a few centuries later had a significant influence on historiography, literature and the development of a collective memory during the English Middle Ages. The dilemma of authors in Christian medieval England explaining the conquest of Christian Britain by their pagan Anglo-Saxon ancestors was nourished by con- tinuous changes in the ethnic composition of the Island resulting from invasions and migrations. The struggle for religious dominance during the Viking raids and for political survival during the Norman Conquest influenced the shaping of English history and the collective memory of the people. I will demonstrate in the course of this contribution that the poem of St Erkenwald can be placed within a discourse tradition which is strongly influenced by the necessity of a shared history and memory. It had been productive for many centuries before the poem was written and a number of earlier authors had contributed to it, the most famous among them being the Venerable Bede. While the poem addresses a variety of theological and stylistic topics and is, of course, influenced by its contemporary religious and social developments, it also contributes to one of the central issues of English identity in the Middle Ages: coming to terms with a pagan origin. By contextualizing this aspect of the poem of St Erkenwald with the scholarly discussion about its presumed authorship and origin, I will further argue for the relevance of the issue of the pagan past among the ruling elites of late fourteenth and early fifteenth century England. 2. The poem of St Erkenwald The poem survives in one medieval manuscript, British Museum Ms. Harley 2250, which originally consisted of 88 folios;1 today, the volume consists of 111 leaves, a flyleaf and two end papers which are modern additions, presumably 1 Harley 2250 contains one further unrelated manuscript that was bound together with the one containing the Erkenwald poem. Coming to terms with a pagan past … 73 added during the rebinding in 1881 (Peterson 1977: 7).2 The poem, titled De Erkenwaldo and De Sancto Erkenwaldo, covers ff. 72b-75a of the manuscript (Peterson 1977: 1).3 The folios 1 until 87 are written in the same hand, with some minor exceptions, indicating that the Erkenwald poem was put into writing by the same scribe as the other texts contained in the manuscript (Peterson 1977: 2).4 Ms. Harley 2250 has been dated to the last quarter of the fifteenth century and is a collection of various, mostly religious, poems including parts of the South English Legendary, a portion of the stanzaic Life of Christ and pieces of text about a number of other English saints (Gollancz 1922: v). Whereas the date of composition of British Museum Harley 2250 has not been the subject of controversy, establishing a date of composition for the poem has not been as simple. While earlier research and earlier editions of the manuscript, including the edition by Isreal Gollancz from 1922, traditionally dated the composition of the poem to 1386 AD, the latest edition by Clifford Peterson argued for a later date of composition in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century (Peterson 1977: 11-15).5 Gollancz based his claim on the celebration of St Erkenwald in London in 1386, adding that the text could also have been part of the preparations of the celebrations, which would indicate a date of composition a few years earlier (Gollancz 1922: lvi).6 Based on the alliterative nature of the poem, Peterson agreed that the composition predates the date of composition of the manuscript; the period of the Alliterative Revival, which the poem belongs to, had concluded by the mid-fifteenth century (Peterson 1977: 12). The language used in the poem indicates a date of composition probably slightly later than 1386 but no later than 1420, which at least limits the possible time period of the composition (Peterson 1977: 15). The poem was also assigned to 2 In his discussion, Peterson followed the inscription in the manuscript claiming it consists of 88 folia; when referring to British Museum Harley 2250 he excluded the last leaves which he claimed to be later additions. Furthermore, he claimed that the date can be fixed pre- cisely based on a colophon on Folio 64v which reads: “Expicit Speculum Xpiani anno do m ccc lxxvi”. There is no indication that the colophon was a later addition to the manuscript; the year of 1477 as the date of composition agrees roughly with earlier discussions about the date of a watermark preserved at the end of the volume, see Peterson (1977: 2). 3 For a detailed discussion of the characteristics of British Museum Harley 2250, see Peterson (1977: 1-11). 4 Inscriptions in the manuscript indicate that it originally consisted of 88 folia; the Harley Catalogue, written in 1759, describes the manuscript as one with 111 folia. Clifford Peter- son claimed a later addition of 24 folia to the manuscript, presumably during the late seven- teenth or the early eighteenth century. The folia following folio 88 are written in a fifteenth century hand, see Peterson (1977: 2). 5 The earliest edition was published by Carl Horstmann in his collection of Old English leg- ends in 1881, see Horstmann (1881). Later editions were published by Israel Gollancz (1922) and by Ruth Morse (1975). The latest edition by was published by Peterson (1977). 6 Gollancz’s claim was shared by Henry Savage, see (Savage 1926: lxxvi). 74 S. Schustereder the tradition of a new interest and direction in historiography which began during the 12th century and continued until the late Middle Ages (Otter 1994: 387). An identification of the author could, of course, help to arrive at a more precise date of composition. In this regard, it has been claimed that the author was the same person who composed the poems Pearl, Patience, Cleanness and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Peterson 1977: 15).7 This assertion has been questioned regularly in the scholarly discussion for two main reasons: first, the author of the Pearl-group, like the author of the St Erkenwald poem, remains unknown. Second, the manuscripts containing the Pearl-group and the story of St Erkenwald are different from each other (Peterson 1974: 49). Larry Benson concluded that the Erken- wald manuscript is not only significantly later than the Pearl manuscript, but that it is also written in a different dialect and in a different hand; there seems to be hardly any evident congruency between the writing of the Erkenwald poem and of the poems of the Pearl-group with the exception of the wording in some lines (Benson 1965: 395-96). The similarities in wording or even the occurrence of similar lines in poems from both manuscripts indicate a common tradition instead of a common author; this argument is supported by similarities in style and meter (Benson 1965: 397-98).8 As long as the question about the common authorship of these texts remains unanswered, Peterson suggested that “the a priori assumption must be that there were five poets” (Peterson 1977: 18-19).

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